


Dead Dreams Like Grains of Sand

by OpabiniaDruce



Category: One Piece
Genre: Flashbacks, One Shot, Trans Crocodile (One Piece), Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28332816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpabiniaDruce/pseuds/OpabiniaDruce
Summary: When Sir Crocodile gave it thought, he always came to the same conclusion: Emporio Ivankov had ruined his chances of becoming the pirate king.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Dead Dreams Like Grains of Sand

When Sir Crocodile gave it thought, he always came to the same conclusion: Emporio Ivankov had ruined his chances of becoming the pirate king. Although the brightest minds on the seas would have all come up with various different answers, deep down he knew his theory was correct. It wasn’t Whitebeard, it wasn’t the World Government, and it wasn’t even some upstart pirate in a straw hat. Sure, on paper they all played their parts, but they were all posthumous wounds that masked the true cause of death of his dream. 

Even now Croc wasn’t sure how he felt about it. Some nights he’d lie there, wondering if he was truly over it all or a tortured soul who longed for one more chance. Those nights were usually ushered in by a stiff drink and quickly ushered out by several more to drown the thoughts out with his consciousness. Croc didn’t view himself as an alcoholic, just as a tactical drinker. 

In truth he didn’t want to think about it. Croc had no desire to wonder what could have been, yet also had just as little want to definitively say he was over it all. He much preferred sailing past that line of thought, focusing more on his current ambitions than his past desires. After all, dream or not, Croc was ever the ambitious man. He liked to joke at fancy parties that if you handed him the whole world on a silver platter he’d try and talk you up to making it gold instead. Needless to say, he hadn’t busted that joke out in a while. 

Croc worked in the shadows almost exclusively now, which was significantly harder when people knew you had a tendency to work there. Yet there was no way Croc could do business in any official capacity anymore, too many enemies in too tumultuous of times. He was willing to play the long game on this one. He didn’t expect the conflicts in The New World to last much longer than a few more years. And once things settled down, at least, as settled down as The New World can be, he would humor the idea of setting sail properly again. 

But in the meantime it was spy networks and covert dealings for Croc. His small retinue of guards and associates kept at a comfortable arm’s length. Save for Daz he didn’t really deal with too many people anymore. In some regards he did miss all the fancy showy business that came with one half hero, one half member of the Shichibukai with a sprinkling of crime boss for some flair. He’d always been something of a showoff, although such tendencies mellowed out significantly with age. It was always a trait he felt he had that most great pirates lacked, a sense of tact. It was important to be loud and proud, but to be so heavy handed and brash about it was just being a fool. 

Then again, it was those loud mouthed fools who made it farther than he did, and it was those loud mouthed fools that served him his worst defeats. And, of course, it was the loudest, most showy, unreasonably gaudy fool of them all that had ruined his dream.

There he went thinking about it again. 

Thinking about him again. 

The worst part about Iva was that he was impossible to hate. Croc had tried several times over but the closest he got was a dull frustration. It was just apart of Iva, this strange magnetic pull that was impossible to ignore and just too stupid to hate. In the end Croc just counted himself lucky that “not hate” didn’t progress into anything close to love. He would have never been able to live with himself if he became one of that drag queen’s groupies. He’d suffer another loss to Straw Hat every day for the rest of his life before he agreed to a fate like that. 

Croc’s past with Iva was perhaps his best guarded secret. It was hard to say for sure, he had plenty of secrets in competition for the spot, yet he was certain there was no other secret in the world that was truly kept between two living people. To this day he still couldn’t believe that Iva had never spoken a word of it to anybody. Even though Iva seemed to lord it over his head at every chance he got. 

It was impossible to forget that day. More than any other it was the best day of Croc’s life. Yet it was also the day his dreams were tainted, the inciting incident that led to their slow, painful death. So vivid was his memory of the day that Croc could still faintly taste the eggs he had eaten that morning for breakfast, cooked slightly too long by that ship’s shitty cook. 

He was still young, unable to afford better eggs or recruit a decent cook of his own. Croc couldn’t remember his bounty back then, and wasn’t even sure if he had one at all. Times were different, Roger’s execution was still a few years away and the seas almost felt simpler. Hindsight proved that it was just him being naive, things were just as complicated then. But back then he wasn’t worth anything, he was hardly able to make it through the seas. He fancied himself a captain but he was more of a drifter, hopping from weak willed ship to weak willed ship ousting the former captain long enough until he reached port and left them for good. 

As Croc walked away from the pathetic little ship he had sailed in, he knew he would never see that awful cook again. And all these years later he couldn’t help but wonder if that awful cook ever amounted to anything, or if he even knew how his captain for four days became something far more. 

For as Croc explored the small village close to the coast he ran into the man who would kill his dream. He ran into Emporio Ivankov. Even wearing a large cloak it was impossible to not recognize the shape of Iva’s body. Even back then Iva was notable, it was hard to not at least know his name if one paid any attention to the news. And the feelings that Croc felt when he first saw Iva were the most confused and conflicted he’d felt in his entire life. Up until then he’d been drifting, trying to find a foothold to chase his dreams. And right then and there an answer just popped right in front of him. And even back then, Croc wasn’t that much of a fool.

So he took the opportunity. 

What he had done next could have been read as a suicide attempt. A frantic grab at the shoulder of someone as powerful and notorious as Iva should have been his end. Especially since Croc back then was so weak, so fresh, so insignificant. Yet, as important and as powerful as Iva was, that did not change one important thing.

This was Iva. 

The drag queen spun around quickly, making unearthly sounds that Croc prayed were giggles. The streets suddenly grew quiet as everyone processed what they had seen. Then the smart ones among them quickly pretended they had seen nothing at all and quickly moved along before things got messy. 

“Ohohoh,” Iva cooed, in a bemused voice that still rang in Croc’s ears all these years later, “how can I help you miss?”

Croc gritted his teeth, wishing he had a smoke the moment he heard him say that. But he remained steadfast, still gripping Iva’s shoulder as if he could actually hold him down. 

“I need your help,” Croc muttered softly, not even daring to look up at Iva. 

“Ah, I see,” Iva remarked without hesitation, instantly understanding more than Croc would have ever been able to say, “in that case follow me, pretty boy.”

With a wink Iva dismissed those around him and led Croc away from the scattered shops. Once away from the buildings and just outside of the vast swaths of jungle around them, Iva suddenly stopped. He spun with speed Croc didn’t expect from a body shaped like that and jabbed Croc right in the stomach. For an instant Croc was certain he was dead, and for a few moments more he was still somewhat confident in the theory. He was cold and hot all at once, sweat poured from every pore. It was unlike anything he’d ever felt before. 

By the time Croc was back on his feet Iva was gone. And Croc was far too distracted by his own body to care. It was a strange feeling, euphoric and terrifying all at once. A once insurmountable hurdle had been cleared with little issue. His body for once felt like everything was in the right place. He even felt a slight brush of stubble on the side of his face. That was the last time Croc cried for quite some time, only ever being brought to tears again several years later when Whitebeard broke him down. It was a moment that saved him from the body he had been cursed with at birth- yet now he knew it was the moment where Iva ruined everything. 

Perhaps it was a bit dramatic of Croc to put so much weight on Iva’s involvement. He knew fully well that what was the most life changing moment of his life for him was nothing more than a mild bemusement for Iva. It was embarrassing, to be so affected by something that was hardly a blip on Iva’s life. And while the two would meet again several times over the years, one thing remained abundantly clear. Iva never cared too much about what had happened, while Croc in turn cared so much it tore him apart. 

For some time he felt perhaps it was the debt that weighed on him. Iva had done something for him that nobody else in the world could do. It was the kind of debt that could usually only be paid with one’s life. But as time passed and Croc’s power grew, he became abundantly aware he didn’t put so much value on personal debts. The more ruthless and calculating Croc grew, the more he realized that this wasn’t him feeling guilty or indebted. 

It took until he was recovering in a hidden away hospital on the verge of death for it to all make sense. Whitebeard had shattered him nearly to pieces and yet, he was nothing to Croc, not anymore. That was the moment his dream to become the king of pirates died. As he struggled to stay awake and every breath stung as sharp as any blade, he knew it was all over. And not only that, it had ended years ago, even before Roger began this new age with his death. 

Iva killed it with one jab that expended little time or effort on his part. Because in that moment Croc achieved a dream, one that had once felt even more impossible than becoming the king of pirates. It was a deeper, raw sort of dream. And it had been gifted to him. Croc did no work, achieved no infamy, won no battle, none of that led him to that dream. Instead he merely took a risk and asked someone for something and got exactly what he wanted. 

In merely giving Croc the one thing he desired most in the world, in letting Croc truly be the man he knew he always was- Iva had removed his need to dream. He had achieved nothing, yet won everything. It was a gamble, the sort of make or break moment that used to play out every day in his casino. That’s why he opened a casino in the first place, from that moment on gambling was a key part of who he was. 

In comparison to what he’d already won in his gambles, fighting to become the pirate king was almost nothing. He fought that truth for many years but Whitebeard finally beat it out of him. Croc did not want to be the pirate king, not on the same level as those who were truly competing. To Croc it was nothing more than a title, status, fame, a true sign of dominance and power. It wasn’t something he wanted to die for, not anymore. 

If Iva had never given him that gift, Croc would have needed to become the pirate king. It would have been perhaps the only way to truly be respected as who he was. And yet Iva stole that struggle from him, took away a need to prove he was a man and left him with a proper body and an eternally bruised heart.

To this day Croc is not sure if he wished he had to prove he was a man to the world or if he was glad that Iva expedited the process. It’s not something he likes to dwell on. Perhaps he already knew the answer, or perhaps there was no proper answer at all. So to Croc, the eternal pragmatist, he simply left it at the facts. Iva killed his dream to become the pirate king. 

And the proud man of the seas would then sail past that line of thought, moving on to anywhere else at all.


End file.
